A Critique of Our Unsustainable Society
Our Statement of Principles
The PDF version is downloadable here.
For the Reader
In this text, we’ve gathered a commentary about our society’s ecologically and socially unsustainable structures and their influences. As a whole, it’s meant to be a critical but hopeful conversation starter: though the ways in which our lives are currently organized are not ecologically, socially, or culturally sustainable, by understanding their underlying causes, we can aim to challenge the contemporary situation and act for change. We also want to show that the ecological crisis is not born of individual choice but is the product of prevaling, oppressive structures and systems. Therefore, broader investigation is needed to achieve real change.
Our commentary is not an exhaustive description of the current situation, or the processes and systems that created it; instead, it aims to encourage the reader to investigate the world around them and the ways in which broadly accepted ways of organizing things can be inherently oppressive and incompatible with a sustainable future. In addition to independent consideration, we encourage creating space for conversations between individuals and movements about alternative futures and looking for concrete ways to advance a more just and sustainable future.
An Introduction to Ecology
We are living in an age of crises, as the climate warms and global biodiversity continues to decrease. We’re at the point where an ever-increasing proportion of the world is feeling first-hand the devastating effects of ecological crises. Though many of us have long understood the need for action, what we see in the mainstream is an unwillingness to take radical enough action. Politicians, representatives of Capital, and media outlets generally only discuss the need to reduce emissions superficially, focusing on only one part of the environmental crisis. Defenders of capitalism argue that we can save the planet while continuing our lives as usual—their solutions have mostly failed, except at maintaining the very hierarchies they benefit from.
However, many other factors than capitalism have played a role in the birth and acceleration of current ecological crises. The causes of our destructive relationship to nature began developing already before the emergence of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, with its explosive increase in carbon emissions. This is why we aim to highlight the complicated nature of our current ecological crises, and their unseverable interconnectedness with other social and economic issues. These issues—like the climate crisis—can’t be solved within our current social system. Working toward a more ecologically sustainable world should, therefore, be based in horizontality and the active dissolution of all hierarchies and forms of oppression.
One problem with our relationship to nature is the contemporary, Western view of humans as exceptional creatures, better than other species, with the right to squeeze all possible resources from the environment for their own use. However, the distinction between nature and humanity has always been artificial. Ecology can direct our action, since the reconstruction and maintenance of ecosystems requires an understanding of the diversity and interconnectedness of life. This understanding has been central to many societies around the world, which shows that our relationship to nature can be something other than dominating and destructive. We must position humanity as part of a broader web of life in order to build an ecologically sustainable society.
On Capitalism
Nearly all environmental crises are intertwined with some kind of overuse of natural resources, be it fossil fuel induced climate change, or the declining biodiversity of forests and disappearance of carbon sinks caused by the paper industry. An endless need to grow, commercialize new territories, and conquer ever more sectors of life has been central to many historical and contemporary economic systems, with capitalism being the most important at the moment. The cause of this destructive cycle is not the greed of individual capitalists, but the internal logic of capitalism itself — new ways to create profit must constantly be found to satiate the need for constant growth and survive competition with other capitalists.
The easiest frontiers for profit-seeking have often been found in the natural world, which is unable to actively resist in the way an organized and conscious working class can. The same logic of capitalism has also created our current class society, which is why the working class and the environment have a shared interest in dismantling the mechanisms of capitalism. In fact, seizing companies and their production into democratic control by their workforce is an opportunity to start an ecological transformation in the economy and the sphere of production.
However, the ruthless efficiency of capitalism, and its ability to continuously renew itself, make capitalism a fluid, in some senses ”revolutionary,” system. Feudal monarchy and Soviet Socialism had similar aims in trying to centralize and expand power, but as stiff systems focused around an unchanging paradigm, they were relatively short-lived and ineffective at producing profit. Capitalism has thus risen to be the most world-historically consequential system for the environment. Eventually capitalism will hit a wall, but the political sphere will decide whether this is caused by an ecological revolution, or a descent into a war of all-against-all, as natural systems collapse around us.
The State
We see the state as a form of organized violence, advancing the interests of the ruling class and of Capital. The state is a separate, centralized power structure from Capital and works with an autonomous logic to renew and expand its own power. Through its justice system, the state enforces property rights, making ownership the primary relationship between humans and nature. The state has a need to control everything within its territory—nature, in addition to humans. The state, its administration and violence, makes possible the destructive extractivism that capitalism (or any other growth-based, centrally controlled system) uses to its advantage. Centrally controlled, so called high modernist projects, have existed in states, be they capitalist or state socialist. Centrally controlled projects are based on the rational organization of humans and nature, to make the projects as legible and controllable as possible, regardless of the diversity and complexity of the environment and social structures. These projects have, unsurprisingly, most often lead to ecological and social catastrophe.
The state reacts extremely critically toward any social movements that emerge outside its control, challenging its authority and monopoly on violence. This is why the state often exerts disproportional repression on the environmental movement. A potential dystopian consequence of the escalating ecological crisis is states trying to protect themselves by increasing the control exerted on people and the environment. We can already see the borders of relatively new nation states creating a global apartheid regime, in which a person’s rights depend on their citizenship. States (and supranational entities like the EU) are militarizing their borders, killing thousands of people every year in the process. The consequences of climate change, which are already visible, especially in the Global South, make the destruction of these borders and institution of genuine free movement of primary importance.
On Social Hierarchies
The hierarchies of our society are not limited to just the state and capitalistic structures. The unequal structures and undercurrents that define our culture have existed long before modern capitalism and the nation-state. A defining factor in our relationship to the environment and to nature is Christianity, which argues that humanity was literally created to govern the environment and nature; to use them as humans see fit, without responsibility to anyone or anything. The Church’s relationship to the state, the upholder of power, has been especially important in the Nordic countries, where church and state have been the same institution since the 1500s. Under the Estate system, the clergy has historically been part of the ruling class and, therefore, sanctions not only the oppression of other humans in the name of Christianity, but also that of animals and nature more broadly. Our critique here is specifically toward the Church as an institution that exercises power. The hierarchical dynamic, familiar from Christianity and other Abrahamic faiths, of humanity on a pedestal, independently ruling right below God, doesn’t have to be a part of religion.
We are also critical of the marriage of Christianity and colonialism that has caused social, cultural, linguistic, and economic destruction to colonized peoples. Colonialism, with the help of Christianity has tried, and partially succeeded, at severing the relationships to nature of many indigenous peoples, and others living in subsistence economies in the Global South, as well as North. Colonialism has served capitalism in ways that have been unjust not only ecologically, but also socially, economically, and politically.
Indigenous cultures have traditionally had more sustainable and even-handed ways to care for their environment, while still taking care of their needs. An example of this would be the use of controlled forest fires and the use of fire to support the life-cycle of the ecosystem by indigenous peoples of the Americas and of Australia. In the Nordic countries, the oppression of the Sámi has been justified with many reasons. They haven’t been seen as developed people or active agents but as part of nature, to be dominated; neither have they been seen as having rights to their land, nor as capable of caring for it.
Animals, too, have been put beneath the White, Christian person in the ecological hierarchy. Animals are often seen as without intrinsic worth—their value to us coming from production, or through selective and marginal companionship. The fight for an ecologically sustainable world will have stopped short if we don’t accept a holistic approach, where the well-being of all species is essentially important. This means bringing an end to factory farming and the fur industry quickly and in a just manner, the end of animal abuse for entertainment and sport, and the right to a species-typical life.
On the Far Right
Fascism has always included ecological aspects. Already in the first half of the 20th century, fascism emphasized the lie of an unbreakable connection between a people and a specific environment and natural landscape, to which they had an exclusive right. Though the forms fascism takes have changed since, public discourse in the 2020s is still infiltrated by ideas of immigrants as invasive species. Fascism uses national-romantic imagery, mythology, and aesthetics to mystify nature, and promote its own, nationalistic perspective on humanity.
However, we see ecologically tinged fascism and ecofascism as two conceptually distinct phenomena. Ethnonationalistic actors may emphasize the importance of Finnish nature, while simultaneously ignoring climate change and connected crises. Finnish nature is seen as pure and beautiful, but threatened by outside forces, which it must be defended from. Modern ecofascism, on the other hand, is not as invested in strenghtening pre-existing colonial relations, but instead aims to create strong, ”natural” hierachies, and stress their importance. An emphasis on locality and traditions, as well as small-scale agriculture and self-sufficiency are also parts of modern ecofascim.
Negativity has been the traditional response by the far right to environmental questions, and climate denialism is common. However, green nationalism is currently gaining popularity as a defining factor in the racist thought of the far right. The far right aims to use the terminology of the environmental movement cynically, in its own favor, but has no interest in actually pushing for the ends they claim to have. We see actively working to prevent far-right slippage in the environmental movement as important. We oppose, in no uncertain terms, ecofasism, as well as all fascisms and other forms of far right politics, which steal terminology from environmentalists in order to mask their racist and oppressive ideas. While the far right attempts to use the environmental movement to its own ends, there is also the risk that, as the environmental crisis unfolds, the far right will benefit from the crisis and the social unrest it will cause. For example, as more people become climate refugees, we have to make sure the far right isn’t able to campaign in favor of closing borders to immigrants.
On Technology
We don’t see technology as a primary solution to the environmental crisis, nor do we see it as a fundamental cause of most crises. It’s clear, for example, that energy production has to be transitioned from fossil fuels to other kinds of technology. Different kinds of technology must not, however, be a way to buy time for our society’s broader unsustainability. The electric car boom is a great example here, as batteries are being used to solve only one of the negative effects of private car ownership, while causing considerable environmental degradation through mining. Changing the overuse of one resource for another doesn’t solve the broader problem, which is unrelated to technology. So, critical resources must primarily be put into joint use, by, for example, putting resource-rich batteries into busses instead of cars. At least in energy production, decentralized methods of production and technologies are not necessarily any more sustainable than centralized ones: bulldozing forests for solar and wind power causes environmental destruction and transforms nature into industrial areas, like nuclear power does.
Even though technology alone won’t solve our environmental crises, there’s still plenty of environmentally beneficial technology that hasn’t been developed yet, that hasn’t been used, or has even been forgotten because in the last couple hundred years, technological development has advanced primarily on the principle of further enshrining the power of the state and of capital, rather than on principles of joint use or ecology. It’s pointless to set technology and political change against each other, as they aren’t separate components; the ecological revolution must also reach the planning, implementation, and use of technology. In addition, we want to demystify the concept of technology—it doesn’t just mean modern information technology, as even people in subsistence economies have used complicated technologies based on, among other things, seasonal cycles and observing nature, rather than the scientific method. Unlike primitivists, we see technologies and their uses as connected to the systems they exist in. Few technologies are harmful in and of themselves; the desirability of their use depends on the volume and power relations involved.
On Centers and Peripheries
The geographical aspects of capitalism and the state are reflected in the strong division of societies into centers and peripheries. The opposing sides of this dichotomy have different roles in production and governance: the whole supply chain is controlled from the center, while primary producers are generally left with only a small compensation and an environment ravaged by industrial production. Bureaucrats in centers also direct peripheries to produce commodities, which primarily enriches the owning class of the centers.
Even though the center and the periphery are interdependent, the relationship between the two is unequal in terms of the infrastructure upheld by states, municipalities, and other concentrations of power. Centers make their own actions possible by using the periphery, creating harmful monocultures and demanding destructive extractivism. This creates the illusion of ethical consumption in cities, as the effects of your consumption are not directly visible in your surroundings.
It’s unnecessary to aim for some subsistence economy utopia, but the tight concentration of primary production outside of centers has increased the size of production units considerably, and enforced a focus on homogenized production, rather than on vital diversity. The ecological harms of industrialized primary production are massive, as the biodiversity of nature is replaced by growing monocultures, especially in agriculture and forestry. In addition, the social and cultural harms caused by centralized, overly large production units are mostly born by primary producers. It’s close to impossible to practice agriculture profitably without massive initial investment, which often creates a considerable debt burden, while concentrating the risks of production on individual actors, rather than equalizing risk over the entire supply-chain and stages of commerce.
In an ecologically and socially sustainable society, geographical social structures must be mixed by de-centralizing and diversifying primary production and bringing at least some of it into centers. We also need to use resources to extend city-like services, such as public transit, healthcare, education, and other provisions for basic needs, to the periphery, while developing horizontal forms of administration and decision-making.
On Ecologically Sustainable Labor
Work is a constant topic of discussion in politics and in the media, and is generally assumed to be an inherently good thing, We always hear about the government’s attempts to create new jobs, and employment is, after all, a common measurement of well-being. However, a considerable proportion of work nowadays is entirely useless, or even harmful to the environment, society, and for workers themselves. This leads workers to feel hopeless and destroys their sense of self. At the same time, especially in reproductive labor such as nursing, there’s a constant deficit of workers, not to mention other structural issues, which lead workers to exhaustion and, eventually, to changing careers. Pointless work is not just socially destructive, but also environmentally unsustainable, as resources are directed to harmful aims, and the only ones benefiting are capitalists.
In cities, it’s much easier for employees to establish some apparent distance from the environmental harm done by their work, as a large portion of primary production and industial labor has been outsourced to the periphery. In the periphery, conditions are different, and there aren’t really any options beyond environmentally harmful work. The struggle for ecologically sustainable labor shouldn’t be fought by shaming and responsibilizing individuals, or by weakening the position of workers, but through an emphasis on the democratization of production and logistics and the changing of structures.
Ecologically sustainable labor must be organized in a way that’s both materially and socially just. The labor we do has to be adapted to fit within environmental boundaries, and be able to respond to the inevitable changes and challenges caused by the climate crisis. This means reducing work that is harmful to the environment and to humans, while also increasing the amount of socially and environmentally necessary reproductive and caring labor. The capitalist system undervalues the caring labor traditionally done by women, despite the fact that we can’t survive without it, or other reproductive labor. By investing in reproductive labor, rather than endless growth and profit-seeking, we can increase well-being for both humans and the environment. We must define the value assigned to labor in such a way that productivity wouldn’t be the most important factor.
Feminism
The binary gender system forms the basis of our society. Division into men and women, and the inherent inequality that comes with it, can be seen everywhere. Socially, a man’s role is seen as being the active, rational, and powerful actor; a woman’s role is the opposite of this: passive and emotional, a role without agency. Women are compared to nature, passive and defenseless, requiring men to defend them — not just from other men, but from the world in general.
Everything in our society is designed for two gender roles. Binary structures also uphold themselves in the absence of other options. However, gender isn’t binary, straightforward or essential. We emphasize the diversity of gender, which is visible in other animals and in nature. The concept of binary sex is also misleading; sex diversity can be seen in many examples in nature. For example, take earthworms and ferns, whose ways of reproducing challenge the idea of a biological, ”natural” sex. By noticing the diversity of sex and gender in both humans and other species, we can get closer to a holistic understanding how diverse nature is, and how we’re in no sense detached from it.
The struggle for the rights of women and queer people must necessarily be included in the actions of the environmental movement. In order to defend the equality of all genders, we have to recognize the destructive, yet often positively perceived, traits associated with masculinity—violence, competitiveness, and the suppression of emotions and vulnerability in the name of seeming strong—that under patriarchy are realized primarily by oppressing women. The same masculinist dynamic also justifies the destruction of the environment. The concept of petro-masculinity describes an identity that joins the above mentioned traits of traditional masculinity with the fossil fuel industry and authoritarian politics. Any changing of routine ways of life to minimize the effects of the environmental crisis is seen as weak and effeminate, as inferior, in other words. In the environmental struggle, we have to undo this oppressive gender system, which denies the existence of genders other than man and woman and upholds masculinity, which by definition allows and advances the environmental crisis.
Conclusion
It’s clear that we can’t continue on our current course, if we want to maintain a livable planet. The owning class understands this and is ready to accelerate the class war, by immiserating the working class and becoming more brutal at maintaining the system of global apartheid, based on state borders and nationality. Hierarchical and binaristic relations between capital and workers, the state and subjects, men and women, as well as governor and governed form the basis of our society, and can also be seen in humanity’s relationship to nature. These kinds of dichotomies by definition prevent the realization of a just and ecological world.
Another future is possible: a future where all species on the planet can have a good life, without destroying the planet and the very necessities for our life. However, we won’t get the world we deserve without fighting. The struggle will take many forms and require cooperation with other politically organized groups that share our aims. First of all, we need to work solidaristically, build coalitions, and support each other in all possible ways. We also have to imagine the world we want to win. How does a world after the state, capitalism, and the patriarchy look? What does justice look like, after hundreds of years of colonialism? What will labor and work mean? To find answers, we need each other.